Amtrak’s Vegas Delays Are as Slow as Desert Tortoise

How many tourists does Southern California send to Las Vegas every year? Millions. On commercial flights alone, the U.S. Transportation Department counted 2.3 million passengers who flew between Las Vegas and Los Angeles last year, making Las Vegas second only to New York among air destinations from LAX.

And how many of us avoided those clogged airports and freeways by traveling on Amtrak from L.A. to Las Vegas this year?

None.

This isn’t for lack of a track. The two cities have been connected by a 340-mile route through the Mojave Desert for decades. But the last L.A.-Vegas ticket was sold in 1997, when Amtrak shut down the route as part of a national restructuring.

Now Amtrak wants to resume service. It has spent more than $15 million on train cars intended for use on that route, and late last year publicly announced resumption of service for September 2000. But it didn’t happen, nor is it likely to happen in 2001.

It’s a many-sided problem, involving desert tortoises, Spanish engineering, the Union Pacific Railroad and various tentacles of the federal government.

Even before Amtrak discontinued the Los Angeles-Las Vegas route, the service was less than brisk. The train, called the Desert Wind, often took seven hours or more. Driving was frequently faster.

An Amtrak plan was drafted to get back on track. It relied mostly on two key ingredients: a 22-mile passing lane that would allow passenger trains to go around the freight trains that slow traffic and new train cars from Spain capable of speeds up to 125 mph.

Together, those innovations were expected to cut trip time to as little as 5 1/2 hours, fast enough to compete with driving.

Amtrak’s planner estimated that, within three years, the route would serve 100,000 customers annually. Amtrak forecast fares of $115 to $160 round trip.

Amtrak has the money and resources it needs to start service, a spokeswoman says. It also has the cooperation of Union Pacific, the freight railroad company that owns most of the tracks. And since summer, Amtrak has had 14 Talgo rail cars from Spain--purchased, it said, for $15 million to $20 million total. The track improvements are slated to push total expenses to $28 million. All Amtrak and Union Pacific lack, they say, is permission to lay their new tracks and roll the trains across them.

But don’t hold your breath.

The stretch of desert where Amtrak wants to add those 22 miles of new track is Cima Hill, about 35 miles this side of the Nevada border. It’s part of the Mojave National Preserve, about half of which has been designated a critical habitat for the desert tortoise.

Since 1990 that tortoise has been listed as a “threatened” species, one notch shy of endangered. Before its habitat can be disturbed, Amtrak and Union Pacific need permission from the National Park Service, with consultation from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. And before the park service can grant permission, the preserve superintendent must be satisfied that the project’s impact can be minimized. (Rather than simply approving or rejecting such requests, public agencies commonly require mitigation measures that change or add to the project. Authorities say it’s too soon to know what those might be.)

Once the Feds say so--if they say so--Amtrak estimates it can lay the tracks in 11 months. But nobody’s sure how long the environmental review and attendant paperwork might take.

“We’re sort of in a holding pattern,” said Vernae Graham, an Amtrak spokeswoman based in Oakland. “We’re waiting for [Union Pacific] to deal with all the permitting issues.”

Union Pacific spokesman Mike Furtney said recently that the railroad’s subcontractor submitted its plan of operation and project proposal to the park service, received a request for further information, then resubmitted it in November.

But “it hasn’t reached us,” Mary Martin, superintendent of the Mojave National Preserve, said last week.

Once paperwork is in hand, Martin said, the federal review process is likely to take four months or more.

The tortoises aren’t the only impediments. The Federal Rail Administration has raised safety questions about the new train cars. Last year, before Amtrak received its Talgo cars (but after they were ordered), the rail administration adopted new safety standards for rail cars--standards the Talgo cars don’t meet, said Amtrak spokeswoman Graham.

The new U.S. standards require that passenger cars be capable of withstanding 800,000 pounds of pressure. The Talgo cars were designed to meet international standards, but they don’t pass the 800,000-pound test. Rail administration officials haven’t made up their minds what to do about that.

Talgo cars have been running without major incident on Amtrak’s Cascade route in Oregon and Washington since 1994. In early September, after 11 months of weighing an Amtrak request for exemption from the new requirements, the rail administration decided to grandfather in the Northwest train cars rather than shutting them down and hobbling rail service in two states.

In their request, Amtrak had asked the rail agency to grandfather in the Talgo trains for service on two other routes as well: between San Diego and San Luis Obispo, and between L.A. and Las Vegas. But the agency stopped short of approving those. Instead, agency officials said they would defer that decision until they had more information, including specifications from the trains’ makers in Spain.

And then there’s the question of a platform or terminal in Las Vegas. Amtrak would like to build a new passenger facility, and Graham said there had been negotiations with landowners over a site near the Strip. (The tracks run near the Rio All-Suite Casino Resort.) But nothing has been formalized. So we passengers wait, and Amtrak waits, and the air corridors and freeways between here and Las Vegas teem with traffic, and out by the state line, the tortoises doze.

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Christopher Reynolds welcomes comments and suggestions but cannot respond individually to letters and calls. Write Travel Insider, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012 or e-mail chris.reynolds@latimes.com.